


In the Face of Apathy

by Dragon_Lover69



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Altpower, F/M, Gun Violence, Gunshot Wounds, Killing, Regeneration, Self-Harm, Undead, apathetic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-06 18:52:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18394304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragon_Lover69/pseuds/Dragon_Lover69
Summary: Taylor Hebert triggers with an altpower where her body is a puppet of her mind and power, with medium regeneration, no sense of feeling, and symptoms of being dead. Basically she's an undead. There will be more action scenes.This story isn't going to be as fucked up as my other one, but you know, somewhat fucked up probably?





	1. Chapter One

I sat on the edge of my bed, staring down at my still limbs. I was mentally exhausted even though I hadn't been physically tired since the locker, but I couldn't sleep it away.   
I kicked my feet, to get some movement into my body, but they moved in precise, smooth, artificial arcs, almost creepily.   
I flopped back onto my bed and covered my face with my pale slender hands I could see the tendons sticking out of the back of my hand, like little hills and valleys. I would've let out a sigh, but I hadn't breathed in almost a week. Or blinked my eyes, swallowed saliva, ate food, went to the bathroom, any of the normal necessities of human life. It fit that I didn't, because I wasn't really alive.  
What little color I'd had on my skin had turned a deathly gray white, and what fat there had been on my skinny arms, had melted away slowly.  
I picked up he knife where I'd dropped it, and probed the cut on my wrist with it. I knew the cut went right across the artery, but only a single drop of thick black blood came out, and I felt no pain. As I hadn't for almost a week now.  
I figured my nerves must've needed my body to be alive to work properly. I couldn't feel much of anything, and I couldn't escape my personal purgatory by death. 

My name is Taylor Hebert, and for me, death was just the beginning.

 

I had made plans to be a super hero, a cape, and to go do some good in the world. But when I actually became a parahuman, all I could feel was apathy at the world and its issues. Maybe it was because of the lack of physical feelings. I didn't linger on the thought.  
I stared unblinkingly at the bloodless gash on my wrist, and knew that it'd be gone in the morning. Just like my previous attempts at self harm. I'd been slowly building up the severity of the wounds, as some part of me didn't really want to en my half living existence, but I disliked not having any emotion, not having any feelings, not being able to feel a hug, or a held hand. I probably would've hated it, but I couldn't anymore. I could just think inside my cold head, that I disliked it.  
I closed my eyes, and sunk the blade of the kitchen knife between my breasts, through my heart I knew it would be parting the muscles of my heart but I didn't feel anything, except the feeling of the blade poking out my back, putting pressure on my spine. I pulled it out, wiped off what little black ooze had gotten onto the blade, and set it back into the drawer.

Tonight I had decided to go out. To try to follow my dreams. I'd always been told to follow my dreams, and to never let go. I couldn't just give up after a week, just because I didn't care anymore.   
In precise movements, I pulled on my mask and hoodie, slid into my jeans, and got on my running shoes. I popped out the bug screen from the window, and slithered out the window to the ground. My body absorbed the impact easily, and I made almost no noise. I kept to the shadows, and quickly left the area, venturing deeper into gang territory.  
I wasn't worried about any large fights, because I was pretty hard to kill, but if I did die, I didn't think I'd really mind. Dad would probably be heartbroken, and maybe he'd never recover, but I didn't feel any guilt anymore.

I'd spent over two hours jogging around, before I finally found gang activity. It looked like a group of ABB members preparing to go on a raid, maybe. I could see someone organizing them, standing in front of them, gesturing with his hands and riling them up.   
As they seemed pretty focused, I snuck up behind the sentry with quick and efficient movements, and broke his neck with a turn of my hands. I lowered his body to the ground, but someone had spotted me, and I heard a bullet pass over my head. I dived for cover, but several bullets still impacted my body with wet sounds, tearing out holes. Some went all the way through, trailing bits of flesh. I crouched behind a convenient low wall made of cement that seemed to be doing a good job of stopping the bullets, and prepared to charge them.   
I leaped up onto the wall, using it to leap high in the air, and then into the midst of the ABB. They shouted in shock and surprise, but only a few actually shot, as most of them seemed to realize they'd be killing friends. A bullet passed through my lower spine, but my body was just a puppet of my mind and power, and that didn't slow me down. I leapt lightning quick from ABB member to ABB member, breaking spines and necks, and tearing the flesh with my sharp teeth. I longed to drink the blood, and feast on the flesh, but I restrained myself. I knew that would get me birdcaged faster than you could blink. Killing was already bad enough, but cannibalism would get me hunted down by the entire Protectorate ENE. I didn't want that.   
I excused my killing in that my victims new the risks, and that they probably would've died in a gang firefight, but I really had difficulty seeing other people as living human beings, which I abstractly knew was a problem.  
I was snapped out of my thoughts by the body of the last gang member falling to the ground with a broken neck. The guy who had been inciting them to violence had vanished when he saw the slaughter, but I could find him later.   
I inspected my bullet riddled body, pulled out the bullets that had hit a bone instead of going through, or just hadn't made it. There must've been at least thirty hits, and I could feel some thick fluid oozing out of the holes in my skull, and I realized that my right eye had been shot, though I hadn't noticed any vision loss.  
My clothing was a total loss as I had expected, so I hurried back to where I had stashed a change of clothes early on my patrol. I stripped naked in the back alley, and inspected where a bullet had gone through my genitals, and where one had gone into my womb. They felt just like any other bullet hole, a slight feeling of absence, but that was it.  
I plugged up some of the holes that were oozing black blood with some tampons I'd brought, and started to walk home. Tonight had been fairly productive, and my wounds would be healed by dawn.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deals with school

I lay back against the edge of the tub, and removed the tampons from the bullet holes. They'd helped protect my clothing somewhat, but it still looked stained. I'd just go without the next time, and use the same stained clothing. I watched the ooze pool up near the drain of the tub, but I could already tell that the wounds were closing, and they'd be closed enough in an hour. My right hand at the moment only had a short stump where my thumb had been, so I was holding up the book with my left hand. Which was missing the pinky and ring finger.

I hadn't really thought about it before, but being sprayed down by assault rifles did amputate a lot of extremities, especially with how thin my fingers were. An assault rifle easily blew off my fingers, and as they were one of my main weapons, that could be a problem. Maybe I could get some heavy duty gloves to reduce the risk. 

I'd thought about my lack of equipment on the walk back, and I tried return to those thoughts, but I kept getting pulled off track by the though of tearing into flesh with my teeth. I knew the thought should disgust me, but it only made me hungrier. Maybe it was a part of my power that I couldn't restrain forever, maybe I needed to eat human flesh to regenerate. I could feel an aching, gnawing hunger in my stomach, that I hadn't felt since the incident, but normal food just sounded unnecessary and unappealing. Like being offered some wood chippings for dinner. And I didn't get the feeling that I needed to eat normal food anymore. Dead creatures don't need to eat anything at all. I strengthened my resolve, and waited out the wee hours of the morning.

The strength of the hunger had only increased over the past few days, and I was starting to be able to smell the blood in a person from a different room. I was glad to be able to smell something again, but the ability to smell the blood of humans was a little creepy. It fit with the rest of my powers I supposed.  
I realized that at some point I wouldn't be able to hold it in anymore, and I'd probably attack and kill the nearest person, and then eat them. So I had to do something controlled before it got to that point. Over the past couple days, I'd went to the morgue and the cemetery, and I felt no hunger towards the bodies that had been dead for awhile. It seemed that it had to be living human flesh, which just made it so much worse. If I could've gotten by on dead bodies, I could've been a hero, a creepy one maybe, but a hero nonetheless. But they'd never stand for me eating the bodies of anyone who had just died, that would almost certainly be too far. 

I made plans for that night, to go out on a patrol of the border area, kill someone from the shadows, and sequester their corpse. If I cut them apart, hopefully no one would come to the conclusion that I had eaten the missing pieces. I figured as long as I killed a low ranking gangbanger, they wouldn't look too hard for him and would probably assume that he had been shot by the other gang or gangs.  
I just had to make it through the rest of the school day. I'd already had to fake injury multiple times, but this time I was prepared. I saw Sophia run up behind me when I was opening the locker, but I didn't brace myself. I let her tackle me from behind, slamming my face and nose into the wall, breaking my nose, and probably my skull too. I collapsed to the ground, trying to act like I'd really been injured.   
They'd really stepped up the physical harm when I'd stopped reacting.   
I held my nose in my hand, like it was bruised or something, and straightened the break. I couldn't really hide the dent in my forehead where I'd hit the locker, but it was too noticeable. I stared unblinkingly at Sophia, and at that point I almost could hold in the hunger, as my body started to mend.   
She must've thought my look was lust, and not literally hunger for her flesh, because she laughed as she kicked me in the back, breaking a few of them. She seemed totally oblivious to how much damage she was doing, cause I didn't think she'd really want to do serious permanent harm because she might get in trouble. Good thing I'd set up my new phone to record this incident, and I'd picked one that could get some quality video.  
She came around the other side, and kicked me in the stomach. I could feel the twinge of a crushed organ, and I curled up for the video.  
I realized that maybe to make the video stick, I'd have to prove I actually got injured in those spots, so I tried to focus on stopping my regeneration. I felt a lessening in the rate of the increase of my hunger, so I hoped it worked.

Sophia laughed again as she stood back, and then the insults started. She went first, but I could tell that Emma had practiced delivering some new insults, and Madison was ready to agree with each insult, and maybe call me ugly.  
"Man, the locked must've really messed you up in the head. But just so you know, I don't swing that way. Dyke." Everyone around Sophia laughed like that was the best insult ever, but I was mad that she was being homophobic, even though I was probably asexual from my power. I cut off her next line. "Can't you think of something else to insult me about this time? Instead of insulting me just because I'm supposedly gay? That's being racist, but instead of skin color, it's their sexuality." I watched the impact of the words hit her. I hoped they'd change something, but I didn't need to stick around to watch. I turned my back, about to grab my phone where it was recording, but Emma grabbed onto my wrist with a surprisingly strong grip. I broke her hold easily, bending some of her fingers backwards by accident. Oops.   
He look over rage turned to one of rage and pain, and she swung her other hand at me. I let it land on my bony arm, which probably hurt her hand quite a lot. She kept swinging at me, with me blocking most of the hits, but letting some land. I never struck out at her, but I figured that she'd probably broken her right hand at least, after landing a strong hit at a bad angle.  
Finally, I stuck out my leg as she lunged towards me, and she tripped spectacularly, face planting hard onto the floor. She splayed out unconscious. I checked her pulse, and it seemed fine. Hopefully she didn't get brain damage I could get in trouble for. I had expected Sophia to attempt to take me down, but she looked like she didn't want to fight me. Maybe I'd proven myself strong enough for her warped worldview. I shrugged, and reached up to the top of the locker, and pulled down the camera with a grin. That made up her mind, and she jumped for me, but I fended off her attempts to dash the phone onto the floor, and sent the video to my email, and to a local news station.   
I showed her the phone screen showing the sent video file, and her hands reached towards he waist before she relaxed. Maybe she had a switchblade in her pocket. She turned around after sending me a glare, and left the school. In the middle of the school day. Weird.

I shrugged and glanced at what must have been everyone who wasn't in a class at the moment, and waved my hand. I remembered at the last moment to act like I had been beat up. "Nothing to see here, move along now."  
A couple people laughed at the joke, but they did eventually stop staring at me, and went back to whatever they had been doing. Not a minute later, I was summoned to the principal's office. I guess Madison had ran off, but too bad for her, I had video proof I'd just been defending myself.  
I walked confidently to the office, though I was faking a limp, and the secretary let me in with a glare. She'd already shredded my application papers for Arcadia, so I figured she didn't like me for some reason. 

I walked into the office to find Madison there in a chair, telling some sob story about how I'd attacked her for no reason, and how I'd beaten up Emma, and the principal listening to her, showing every sign of believing it.   
Principal Blackwell stared at me intimidatingly. "You are in very big trouble, young lady. I hear that you assaulted two other students, and knocked one unconscious?"   
I sighed loudly and obnoxiously. "You must've heard wrong then, ma'am, I was just trying to enter my locker code, when I was tackled from behind by one Sophia Hess, and I believe I have a broken nose and a cracked skull from that. Then I was kicked when I was on the ground, multiple times, from which I have multiple cracked ribs. And then Emma proceeded to try to beat me to death, from which I defended myself, until she unfortunately tripped over my leg, and hit her head on the ground." I waited to see what her reply would be. On the way down the hall, I had bent my nose back so it looked broken.

"And you expect me to believe that tripe?" Principal Blackwell demanded angrily. Maybe I'd been a little too disrespectful, but it didn't matter. "You have been making up lies about Madison, Emma, and Sophia since the first day, but you've gone too far. You will be expelled immediately." She slammed her fist onto the desk.

"I have video proof." I casually mentioned, a slight smile on my face.

Principal Blackwell froze. "Hand over the video now, or you'll be expelled!" She shouted, standing up to try to tower over me. I was still taller than her, so it was ineffective. 

"It seems either way I'll get expelled, but I won't be handing over the recording, and I already sent it to the news." I didn't care if I got expelled anyway, I was ruining her career, and we both knew it. "It would be advisable to get me medical attention, as I don't know the severity of the skull fracture." She turned purple with rage, but she was in damage control mode. 

"Show me your supposed video." She snarled. 

I tossed my phone to her, with the video ready to play. I watched her face change colors through the course of the video, starting with green from the close up sound of my skull and nose breaking, and then turning purple and red.

"Madison Clements, you are hereby expelled." She looked utterly calm, but I could tell she was so mad she'd gone all the way around.

Somehow, Madison still managed to look shocked at the turn of events. 

Principal Blackwell picked up her phone, and dialed 911. "I need an ambulance for two students."

I smiled.


End file.
